Welcome to the world of Jenniffer Wardell, author of “Beast Charming," "Fairy Godmothers, Inc," "Fighting Sleep" and more. It's a place where fantasy runs smack into reality (after which they both exchange business cards and hope no one calls the insurance company). Perfect for fans of Terry Pratchett and Mercedes Lackey's "500 Kingdoms" series.

This is the heart of BEATRYSEL. Remembering always the flip side
of emotion, I strove to imagine what perfect pain a perfect love could bring,
what perfect betrayal from a perfect mate. As I imagined love given form, I
only had to turn the euphoria a few degrees to see the depths of despair
waiting in balance. The rest wrote itself.

BEATRYSEL began as a love story, and still is, but it in I
explore the dark sides of love, its axioms and inversions. Though I prefer
“occult thriller,” some have called it “horror” and that might be as good a
description as any because what can be more horrible than love, that omnipotent
euphoric nucleus of being turned around?

What I expose is how vulnerable one can be when they give
themselves over completely to another. It’s a good thing, to love that much,
but there is a danger. In the natural flow of things, given time, this
emotional exposure is often mitigated by wisdom and maturity. But not always
and never completely. Because if you cannot be hurt by your lover, how can you
say you love them?

Every love we have has the potential to hurt us. The deeper we
are in love, be it for a child, a sister or a spouse, the greater is the
potential for dissatisfaction and heartache. But luckily, blessedly, usually
that doesn’t happen and unless we have first hand experience, we’re always
blind to the danger going in.

It’s cold comfort to know that when it does go bad, we can
measure our worth and emotional giving by the duration of our sobs and the
volume of our tears. And the tension in our fists.

It doesn’t always end this way. But it could and sometimes does.

Johnny Worthen

For those who have this experience, I present to you, your
sister, BEATRYSEL. To those of you with the imagination to conceive of it, I
present to you your friend BEATRYSEL. To those of you who are immune to this
kind of pain, I present to you your nemesis, BEATRYSEL.